SAN DIEGO – Wildfires blown by fierce desert winds Monday reduced scores of Southern California homes to ashes, forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee and laid a hellish, spidery pattern of luminous orange over the drought-stricken region.

At least one person was killed in the fires, and dozens were injured. Nearly 130 homes had burned in one mountain town alone, and thousands of other buildings were threatened by more than a dozen blazes covering at least 310 square miles.

“The sky was just red. Everywhere I looked was red, glowing. Law enforcement came barreling in with police cars with loudspeakers telling everyone to get out now,” said Ronnie Leigh, 55, who fled her home at a mobile home park as smoke darkened the sky over the nearby ridge line.

Firefighters – who lost valuable time trying to persuade stubborn homeowners to leave – were almost completely overwhelmed as gale-force winds gusting to 70 mph scattered embers on the dry brush. California officials pleaded for help from fire departments in other states.

A pair of wildfires consumed 128 homes in the Lake Arrowhead mountain resort area in the San Bernardino National Forest east of Los Angeles, authorities said.

At least 14 fires were burning in Southern California, said Patti Roberts, a spokeswoman for the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services.

From San Diego to Malibu, more than 150 miles up the coast, some 265,000 people were warned to leave their homes. More than 250,000 were told to flee in San Diego County alone, where hundreds of patients were moved by school bus and ambulance from a hospital and nursing homes, some in hospital gowns and wheelchairs. Some carried their medical records in clear plastic bags.

A 1,049-inmate jail in Orange County was evacuated because of heavy smoke. The prisoners were taken by bus to other lockups.

In San Diego, more than 194,000 reverse 911 calls – calls from county officials to residents – were made, alerting residents to evacuations, county Supervisor Ron Roberts said.

Many of those told to evacuate ended up at Qualcomm Stadium, home to the NFL’s Chargers, where thousands of people huddled in eerie silence on the bleachers, staring at muted TV news reports of the wildfires. A lone concession stand served coffee and doughnuts.

Many evacuees gathered in the parking lot with their pets, which were banned from the stadium.

The sprawling Del Mar Fairgrounds on the coast was also turned into an evacuation center, along with high schools and senior centers.

At least one of the fires, in Orange County, was believed to have been set. And a blaze threatening the homes of the rich and famous in Malibu might have been caused by downed power lines, authorities said.

Mel Gibson, Kelsey Grammer and Victoria Principal were among the celebrities forced to abandon their homes over the weekend, their publicists said.

Another blaze was started by a car fire. Flying embers started new fires at every turn.

San Diego County fires were burning so fast that authorities did not have an accurate count of how many homes had been destroyed.

“It was nuclear winter. It was like Armageddon. It looked like the end of the world,” Mitch Mendler, a San Diego firefighter, said as he and his crew stopped at a shopping center parking lot to refill their water truck from a hydrant near a restaurant. Asked how many homes had burned, he said, “I lost count.”

Tom Sollie, 49, ignored evacuation orders in Rancho Bernardo to help his neighbors spray roofs on his street with water. His home was untouched, but he watched a neighbor’s house reduced to nothing but the remnants of a brick chimney. “The house went up like a Roman candle,” Sollie said.

He added: “If we weren’t here, the whole neighborhood would go up. There just aren’t enough fire trucks around.”

The blazes in San Diego County and elsewhere erupted one after another over the weekend. Things got worse Monday, when several new fires erupted and other fires merged. Parts of seven Southern California counties were ablaze.

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